Trawling through competitor’s links is extremely time consuming, but worth while if done properly. Do not blindly chase all the same links from the sites in the top positions, this can end up causing you more problems.
Good link analysis software will give you tonnes of link data which can sometimes be overwhelming to someone new to link building. The secret is to sieve through the data quickly finding quality low hanging fruit. By quality I mean finding the authority links within the link profile that are easliy obtainable. Some links are not worth obtaining, like low quality directory links. The #1 site my have the authority and trust to get away with some spammy links, but these same links could cause you to incurr a penalty.
Another problem with chasing competitor links is when you discover paid links. Just because they are ranking and have some paid links, it doesn’t mean you should buy these link too. Sometimes building a cleaner link profile will give you the competitive advantage in the long term. I’ve recently been working in a niche where all the top sites had the same paid link. The price was $350/mth for a blogroll, which is not cheap. The domain was 10 yrs old with tonnes of authority but in my opinion the link was not worth the money.
I see this happening a lot in competitive niches where agencies are playing with large link budgets, they believe they can easily buy their way to the top. It just doesn’t work like that. Here are some examples of competitor’s links to watch out for:
- Blog rolls.
- Footer links
- Low quality directories
- Paid Links
- Non relevant links
- Unnatural .edu & .gov links
- Link networks
It’s true that the sites ranking in the top positions are usually doing so from a handful of links, its about acquiring these links while remaining risk averse. The best way to do link building from your competitor link data is to cherry pick. Pull of the link data from the top ten sites and go through the link profiles picking off the best links from each profile.
